Sunflowers

Like some previous paintings, this was done on a panel first toned dark green. This eliminates having to fight all that white in the beginning but necessitates laying down the lighter values with copious amounts of paint.

Rose with Apple

Although I love oils, every now and then I like to play with acrylics. You acrylic painters out there amaze me. This stuff dries so fast!

Pomegranate

Last week, the demonstrator at the Hamden Art League meeting was Dick McEvoy, who gave a very energetic pastel landscape demo. His major point was to have fun while making art (which he clearly did during the demo). He snatched random colors from his pastel box, made lively marks and color patches and in the end, the painting read as trees and a stream alive with color and movement.

Inspired by the fun motif, I changed by usual perspective (still life at eye level) and put in color patches not seen in real life (just because I felt like it). The result is the above painting.

Chocolate Covered

I was in the mood for something more decadent than a pear. The doughnut was from a local shop, Whitney Donut. It was funny looking over the selection not with taste but with visual appeal in mind. At the time, I wasn't thinking about including the bag in the composition but I liked the white bag and the bag was the more challenging to paint.

Single Blue

In this painting, I used a variation of a technique learned at Stanley Bielen's workshop. I toned the panel with dark green acrylic -- because it dries within minutes there was no waiting to start painting. The challenge was to get the illusion of petals without painting each one individually.

As always, these dark paintings are more difficult to photograph accurately, the background is not quite as dark as it appears and excuse the glare on the upper right.

Lemons (Twice)

The painting below was painted a while ago and put in the not good enough to show, not bad enough to throw out right away rack. It just felt too timid. This week, I had another go at it and the result is the above painting.